Consequences
by Wingless Angelic
Summary: What are the consequences when the course of time itself is derailed? It all started with a girl Zack finds in a decimated village. How could him rescuing a mute little girl change things so much? What did Hollander want with her, anyway?


hi, i'm back. its been a very long time since i've written anything (i look back now and see some of my writing really sucked). but i took my time with this one and i'm going to try to get another chapter out soon but if i rush myself it always ends up sloppy.

well here it is. i hope its better than my others.

* * *

"Take cover behind that debris!"

The SOLDIERs on the battlefield leap behind cars, crates, pieces of buildings; anything they could find. The rebels used machine-guns, and even though a SOLDIER could heal incredibly fast, being shot enough times could kill them.

A young 1st class SOLDIER with reddish-brown hair and neon-amber eyes approached the General behind the debris.

"Sir! I got one grenade left! If I aim this right, I can take out the rest of those bastards with one shot!" he shouted over the roar of the gunfire.

General Sephiroth looked at the SOLDIER and shouted back, "Cassen, you had better aim this right, or I'll bring you back just so I can disembowel you!" just as a bullet broke through the dilapidated wall right next to his head.

Cassen looked through a broken window and, with the barest of calculations, hurled the grenade at his target. An explosion rocked the field, with dirt and debris flying everywhere, and then... silence. The troops looked over or around whatever they were hiding behind.

Dead. Every single one of the rebel warriors were dead.

A cheer erupted from the SOLDIERs. The battle had been won.

Zackary Fair, the General's second in command, was so relieved that he collapsed onto a ratty blanket balled up against the wall...

And immediately jumped back up when the 'blanket' whimpered.

"Whoa!" he yelped while stumbling forward. His comrades came over.

"What's wrong man?" a fellow SOLDIER, Marcius, asked him.

"That blanket just squeaked at me!" he replied hysterically.

The other SOLDIERs started laughing. Cassen grinned and said, "Don't worry, man. Probably just a scared puppy or something."

But as Cassen lifted the blanket, they saw a young girl, no more than six or seven, with tangled lavender curls, pale skin, and wide, frightened aquamarine eyes.

Just then, the transport for the SOLDIERs arrived.

"Bring the child along, Zackary."

Confused, Zack looked at the General.

"I don't want any innocents getting hurt," Sephiroth clarified before following the others out.

Zackary's eyes widened in realization. To erase company misconduct, this small village would be bombed. There would be nothing left to recognize. _Damn it all_. Didn't Genesis care how many lives he ruined?

Sighing, Zack went to pick up the little girl, but she shrunk away in fear. Zack, never lacking in ideas, reached into a back pocket and pulled out a prepackaged cookie he bought at a convenience store.

The girl seemed to weigh her options, before slowly and cautiously making her way to the black-haired SOLDIER. He unwrapped the cookie and gave it to her before picking her up and making his way to the helicopter that was waiting for them. She was done with it before they reached his ride home.

Zack sat in his normal 'Second-in-Command' seat. Which was basically the seat to the right of the General. Cassen, seeing the girl on Zack's lap, reached out to pat the her on the head.

When he touched her, however, something similar to a jolt of electricity sent him reeling. As he was trying to figure out what just happened, she sent him an apologetic look. He stared.

"Well, that was unexpected..." Sephiroth said, more than a little surprise slipping into his voice.

"How'd you get her to let you pick her up, Zack?" Garros, a colonel with bright blond hair, asked.

"Bribery, actually," Zack answered, watching the girl as she yawned.

"Bribery, you say?" Sephiroth said, sounding just as bored as he felt.

"Yeah. I gave her a Quik-Shopp cookie and I guess she decided I was alright," Zack said, getting a few chuckles out of the rest of the SOLDIERs.

The girl laid her head against Zack's chest and dozed off just as the chopper lifted into the air.

When she awoke, she was being carried into a building bigger than anything she had ever seen. She could make out the words "Midgar" and "ShinRa" on a sign as they walked through a door.

As they approached a young Wutaian man in a suit, Zack whispered to her, "Just be calm and don't say anything."

She rolled her eyes. Yeah, she would just start screaming even though she didn't have working vocal cords.

"Who's this?" the man asked, staring directly at the girl.

"Surviver of the village raid, Tseng," Sephiroth replied evenly.

This man, Tseng, studied her with an eerie intensity. But unlike most children who managed to get that glare, she didn't look away. When their eyes finally met, Tseng felt a thrill of fear shoot up his spine. There was something about those eyes that made him uneasy. They looked older than they should have been, like a warrior hardened from battle.

"Does she have a name?" Tseng asked, looking at Zack.

"Uh, I think so..." Zack replied, before having something gold-colored and shiny held in front of his face.

He took it from her and found it to be an engraved name bracelet.

"Kylie Anna," Zack read out loud, then asked, "Is that your name?"

The mass of lavender colored hair against his chest nodded.

Zack looked at Tseng. "There you go. Her name is Kylie Anna."

Tseng again studied Kylie. He knew her. She was just too familiar. His eyes narrowed as she looked at him with a look of pure hatred. He felt a peculiar sensation within his skull. It was like a tangled ribbon unfurling. Then he heard a single sentence that struck terror within him.

_"There is a specific level of Hell reserved for liars."_

It was her. The child he had been told to get for Hollander. The one that disappeared when the Genesis uprisings started. The one whose mother had been told that she would be taken care of. The one nearly tortured to death in the labs. This was her.

Tseng's eyes widened in fear despite his training. This girl had sent him that message. He was going to die.

As Zack walked away, still holding Kylie securely in his arms, Tseng turned and walked away. He started cursing every god he knew (even ones not worshiped anymore just to be thorough) for bringing this girl back. He had no doubt in his mind that Kylie had been modified and trained enough by now that that she could kill him with one hand. And she wasn't even three feet tall.

Zack, however, was now completely confused. One minute Tseng looks pissed off, the next he looks terrified. What was it about this girl that spooked him that much?

Oh well. He'd worry about it later. Right now, he had to get Kylie to the medical wing. He started to walk to the military wing, near the labs, but then remembered that Kylie had to go to the civilian wing which was on the floor above it.

"Stupid bureaucratic bullshit," Zack muttered under his breath as he trudged up the stairs. It was faster than taking the elevator. Why couldn't they just have one medical facility for everyone? That would make life so much easier. At least troops that brought in refugees got tended to first. He didn't think he could stand sitting in a stuffy waiting room full of crying kids and their frustrated parents for very long today.

The nurse immediately had Zack bring Kylie into a small walled off section. He sat with her while they took her blood pressure and temperature. He felt her tense when she was having her blood drawn. But what surprised him was when the doctor came in, her eyes widened in fright and she scrambled behind him.

"What the...?" Zack glanced behind him at Kylie. She was staring at the doctor as if he were a monster. Zack tried to move so that the doctor could get to her but, with surprising strength for a little girl, she held him there. She had looped her hands through his armor and was not letting go.

"What's the matter with you?" Zack asked, turning to look at her fully.

What he saw scared him. Kylie was looking at the doctor, but clearly seeing something else. It was the same look Sephiroth had when he lapsed into psychosis in the labs. A look of pure, unadulterated fear. But... he thought Sephiroth had been the only one raised in the labs. And even then, they hadn't started the painful modifications until he was at least nine. Why would Kylie...?

He found his answer. Hollander. That guy was just disgusting. But it also explained Tseng's reaction. Turks were often sent out to get test subjects. Tseng had probably been assigned to get this girl and bring her back to the labs for experiments.

"Hey, Doc?" Zack said.

The doctor looked up, "Yes?"

"Could you step outside, take off your lab coat and then come back in?"

The doctor looked confused.

"Humor me?"

The doctor stepped out of the room and Zack could feel Kylie relax. As they waited those few moments Kylie crawled into his lap and leaned against him. She was already half-asleep when the door opened again.

The doctor walked in again, sans the coat. This time Kylie merely regarded him with curiosity. That was it then. The coat set her off.

Often, project SOLDIERs who were modified in the labs were leery of anyone in a long white coat. He could only imagine what it would do to a kid this young. Especially with that sadistic, whack-job Hollander doing the modifications. That was just a really scary thought.

* * *

A while later, Zack was heading back to his ShinRa issue apartment with Kylie in tow. He tried to leave her with the child care department, but he was already getting attached to this little brat. Oh, well. It was all for the best, anyway. The labs wouldn't dare go after the child of a SOLDIER operative. They'd have the entire Elite Division ripping the labs (and its occupants) to shreds. Quite literally. Hey, they didn't go through all those enhancements for nothing.

They reached his large flat on the 50th floor, and he opened the door as quietly as possible. The tapping of claws on tile greeted him. His roommate, that only a few people knew about, was a rare sentient canine that had, just months prior, taken up residence in his vents. He gave her some food and so began their close friendship. She had told him that her name was Toriko and that she was abducted from her homeland of Wutai by a scientist name Hojo.

Toriko was a slender, sleek creature with thick fur as white as fresh snow and as soft as silk. She was around three feet tall at the shoulder (although she only been one foot tall when they met) and had ten long, bushy, prehensile tails. She, being capable of speech, had a sharp, sarcastic, yet somehow lighthearted sense of humor, which she exhibited quite often. Toriko hated being wrong. Fortunately that didn't happen as often as others would have liked.

As she approached, she saw the little girl in Zack's arms and stopped dead. In a very human-like moment, her jaw went slack and her shoulders slumped a bit.

"I knew it. With all those past girlfriends I _knew_ it was bound to happen. You had a kid and you didn't tell me! I'm heartbroken, Zack. And here I thought you trusted me," she said in a mock accusatory tone.

"She's _not_ mine, and will you keep it down? She's asleep," Zack said, glaring at his friend's obnoxiousness.

Toriko winced a little at his tone. Apparently he'd had a rather trying day.

"I'm sorry," she said genuinely, "I was only joking. Besides, I knew she wasn't yours. She doesn't have your scent."

"She's a survivor of the village raid I went on today," Zack said, laying Kylie on his couch.

"She smells like a laboratory," Toriko remarked.

"I think she was one of Hollander's lab rats."

"Only the most vile of creatures would torture the young of another," Toriko said with a growl.

"I agree with you completely, Tori," Zack said with a sigh.

He slouched in the middle of his sofa with Kylie's head on his knee. Toriko jumped up on his other side. She watched Kylie for a few minutes and smiled softly. Then, she put her front paws on Zack's chest and smiled a smile that seemed protective and threatening at the same time. That look sent a shiver down his spine.

"So..." she said, a predatory gleam lighting her crystal blue eyes, "Can we keep her?"

* * *

there you go.

to explain: yes, toriko is based off of the kitsune. and i apologize to whoever i took the name from. i just thought it was such a cool name.

please review. it'll help.


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